The North Down South - 2. 2. Step by step (I'll get to know you)

The admissions seminar was just two weeks away. I’d somehow blinked and missed my entire summer break.

Admissions at UTN did not consist of a single entrance exam, but rather a full set of courses, with weekly classes, assignments, and (of course) exams. In theory, it was meant to ease students into university life. In practice, it was a can of worms’ worth of insecurities for me.

I was certain I was not ready to walk into a university classroom. I did not know nearly enough about algebra or physics or geometry or—fuck, legislation, I was supposed to know something about that, right? I was simply not ready to sit in front of a professor and take a university-level class.

I couldn’t say when I started caring so much about this university thing. I mean, I hated the idea at first. Even after letting Lauti convince me to at least look into it, I didn’t really think I’d go through with it. I’d waited until the last minute to sign up. But something had changed in me sometime in those months. And I knew Lauti had something to do with it. But it wasn’t just him.

Valentín, the engineer.

I really wanted to do it. I wanted to go to university, I wanted to study, I wanted to graduate. I wanted to give the people around me a reason to be proud of me. And I wanted to be proud of myself, too.

That was fine and all (fucking yeepee for actually wanting for myself what The System expected me to do, right?), but this newfound drive to actually pursue a higher education degree was making the whole process feel really fucking intimidating.

I let out a deep sigh and tossed the pencil across the table.

I needed a break.

I scrolled down the notifications on my phone. The guys had met up to play ball, and then they were going to Tomi’s. These days they extended their invitations out of courtesy, I think. They knew I was stressed out of my mind, and they respected my educational enterprise, which I appreciated. But it still felt bad missing out on the time we could be spending together now that school was over. It was weird, not seeing them every day. And it was weirder still knowing we would only see each other less as time went by.

Lauti had asked me how revising was going a few hours ago. My fingers hovered over the screen for a second. I really needed to finish these problem sets today if I wanted to make any progress.

I sent him a picture of the kitchen table, with three different books open at the same time and a good half a dozen of loose notebook pages with scores and scores of numbers scribbled on them.

It took him a little over a minute to respond.

“Want me to come over?”

I groaned into my arm. I was never going to get anything done with him there.

But I still wanted to see him.

“i’ll go.”

I did need a break, after all.

In my backpack I threw my phone, my keys, my wallet, and a box of condoms. I walked a few blocks down the street to Marian’s workshop (she was still out of town, but I’d earned my own set of keys some time ago).

At the workshop I kept what was easily my most prized possession, my pride and glory; the hard-earned fruit of my labor. There lay La Gorda, the Frankenstein Yamaha that I’d spent two years nursing back to life with my own two hands and all the spare parts Marian and I could gather.

Seeing it there, waiting dormant for me, nearly brought a tear to my eye. It’d been way too long since I’d last taken my Gorda out for a ride.

I put on my helmet and hopped on the bike. By now getting on top of her felt like putting on a custom-made glove, it was just right. I turned the throttle and heard her roar. Once, twice. Music to my ears.

Off I went.

I decided to take the long route to Lauti’s place. I could’ve found the shortest way to the nearest highway and get down at Caballito in under 20 minutes, but I didn’t feel like hurrying today.

I was nine when I rode a motorbike for the first time, my dad’s brand-new Honda Falcon. It was black all over, and I remember thinking it was the slickest, most elegant vehicle I’d ever seen, like you’d expect Batman to be on top of it. We called it Batimoto. When he first got it he would take me everywhere in it. You couldn’t have been blamed for thinking he was a model father, taking me to school and picking me up every day. My mother hated it. Said it was a coffin on wheels. She eventually succeeded in forbidding him from letting me on the bike, and from that point on the 36 bus taught me what true hatred felt like—the 36, unquestionable winner of the Valentín Gómez Award for Worst Bus Line in Buenos Aires City.

I was ten when my dad crashed the Batimoto coming down the Acceso Oeste highway and went into a coma for two days, as if to succinctly confirm my mother’s warnings. She and I stayed those two days by his hospital bed praying for God not to take him away from us, and she made me swear in the name of the Virgin Mary to never be as reckless as he had been. I'd learned then and there parents were just as likely to die as anyone else.

Promise it to me, Valentín.

I was eleven when my mother broke a different promise herself, when she took her own life and left my dad and I alone for real. My dad's accident had been a mock trial. My mother's suicide was theory turned praxis.

I was thirteen when my dad got a new bike. I spent most of my life from that point on two hot wheels, chasing the sweet scent of charred pavement and motor oil.

Lauti was waiting for me by the door when I arrived.

“What,” I said. “Couldn’t wait for me?”

He planted a firm kiss on my lips.

“I’m but a desperate damsel, languishing alone in my castle, waiting for my knight in shining armor to come.”

I looked behind me.

“Is he close by or do you think I can steal a few more kisses from you before he shows up?”

He kissed me again. And then I kissed him. And then again.

La Gorda was my most prized possession. Getting Lauti to be my boyfriend was my most prized accomplishment.

“Where’s Corina?” I asked once we’d gone up to his apartment.

“At my grandparents’,” he sighed. “They’re still going on about those vacations to Córdoba I told you about, but I think this round of negotiations is going to fail too. I swear, my family could put Congress to shame with how difficult it is to get them all to agree on anything.”

“I would definitely vote for your mom if she ran for Congress.”

Lauti rolled his eyes. “I’m sure she would pick you to run in her list.”

I flashed him a conspiring grin.

In the months since graduating high school I’d developed an unlikely friendship with Lauti’s mom, with whom we found much common ground on the various ways we liked to harmlessly poke fun at her son. Lauti was always saying he found the two of us together to be an unbearable pair, but I could tell he enjoyed how well we were getting along. And, honestly, so did I.

That was another thing I envied about Lautaro: his family. Even his father, distant and complicated as he appeared to be, had made me feel welcome in the weeks he’d spent in Buenos Aires after Christmas.

I mean, it certainly helped that we were both die-hard followers and stalwarts of the eternal 10, Juan Román Riquelme.

Without me having to ask, Lauti put on the kettle and started preparing the mate.

“How’re those numbers coming along?”

I let out a (perhaps too honest) groan. That was enough of an answer.

He said: “Want me to see if I can lend you a hand?”

“Nah. It’s not even the math problems or the physics or even the readings. It’s just…”

“The nerves?”

I nodded.

“You know, most people are going to be just as lost and scared as you. You’re all going to be first year students, love. No one’s expecting you to know it all from day one.”

I shrugged. Lauti had a knack for presenting rational answers to irrational problems. In that sense, he was much like an engineer. Me? Not so much.

He said: “You’re so much smarter than you give yourself credit for.”

“You’re just saying that because we sleep together.”

That earned me a kitchen cloth being thrown at my face.

“If sleeping with you were my only concern I wouldn’t be encouraging you to get into university, fuckface. You spend so much time with your face buried in those textbooks we barely do anything anymore. At this rate l fear I’ll become a virgin again.”

I knew what he was doing. He knew what he was doing. We were merely filling the blank space before the inevitable with conversation. Condiment and spice. I slid closer to him, pinning him against the kitchen counter, pressing my full weight against him.

“Now, we can’t allow that to happen, can we?”

He placed a kiss on my jaw, and then another just on the edge of my lips. I felt the warmth of his hand cupping the back of my neck.

To my ear, he whispered: “You’ve got much lost time to make up for, Valentín Gómez.”

I kissed him, gently. He kissed me, with force. Tongue, teeth, intent. I was happy to oblige.

It was clear now, I could feel it: I needed this too.

I took hold of him by his thighs and brought him up to sit on the counter, making him yelp. He buried his face on the nook of my neck, his breath hot and heavy against me. Our hands wandered freely on each other: it’d been some time, but we still knew each other well, the maps of our bodies now long engraved into each other.

My fingers pulled at the waistband of his shorts (he was wearing my Boca shorts, it had not been lost on me). He shoved his hand down the back of my jeans. I took a deep breath…

Squeeeeeeeee.

The shriek of the kettle coming to a boil made us both stop in our tracks. We stared at each other for an instant, wide-eyed, as if we’d been caught by one of our parents in the midst of something unspeakable.

After an instant, we broke down in laughter.

“God,” Lauti said, once he’d taken the kettle off the heat. “We should probably go to my room.”

“Yeah. Let’s do that.”

The brief moment of passion interrupted, I spared a thought to our conversation from before. I thought of how I could always count on Lauti to cheer me up when I was being hard on myself, a scene so familiar I’d lost track of how many times it’d played out since I’d met him. I thought of how he’d had faith in me from the beginning, even back when I was behind on second year math and everyone, including my closest friends, thought I was too thick for school. I was convinced of that myself, after all.

He genuinely saw something in me. And somehow time had proved him right. I had proved him right.

Huh.

Maybe this university thing wasn’t going to be so hard, after all.